One Man in His Time Part 36

"Everything looks dreadful, I know; but I haven't been well, and one of the servants has gone to a funeral in the country."

"It doesn't matter," Corinna hesitated an instant, "only I wish you would make some one throw out those dead flowers downstairs."

"I haven't been in the room for a week," replied Alice, dropping back on the couch as if her strength had failed her. "I don't seem to care about the house or anything else."

As soon as her surprise at Corinna's visit had faded, she sank again into a listless att.i.tude. Her figure grew relaxed; the faint animation died in her face; and she gazed at her visitor with a look of pa.s.sive tragedy, which made Corinna, who was never pa.s.sive, feel that she should like to shake her. Her soft brown hair, as fine as spun silk, was tucked under a cap of old lace, and beneath the drooping frill her melancholy features reminded Corinna of a Byzantine saint. Over her nightgown, she had thrown on a j.a.panese kimono of ashen blue, embroidered in plum blossoms which looked wilted. Everything about her, Corinna thought, looked wilted, as if each inanimate object that surrounded her had been stricken by the hopelessness of her spirit. To Corinna's energetic temperament, there was something positively immoral in this languid resignation. "Un-happiness like this is contagious," she thought. "And all because one man has ceased to love her! What utter folly!" Aloud she said only, "I came to ask you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance."

"To-morrow? Oh, Corinna, I couldn't!"

"Do you remember that blue dress--the one that is the colour of wild hyacinths?"

"Yes, but I couldn't wear it again, and I haven't anything else."

"Well, I like you in that, but wear whatever you please as long as it is becoming. You must look ethereal, and you must look happy. Men hate a sad face because it seems to reproach them, and, even if they murder you, they resent your reproaching them."

There was a deliberate purpose in her levity, for an intuition to which she trusted was warning her that there are times when the only way to treat refractory circ.u.mstances is to bully them into submission. "If you once let life get the better of you, you are lost," she said to herself.

"You can't understand," Alice was murmuring while she wiped her eyes.

"You have always had what you wanted."

Corinna laughed. "I am glad you see it that way," she rejoined, "but you would be nearer the truth if you had said I'd always wanted what I had."

"It seems to me that you've had everything."

"Very likely. The lot of another person is one of the mountains to which distance lends enchantment."

"You mean that you haven't been happy?"

"Oh, yes, I've been happy. If I hadn't been, with all I've had, I should be ashamed to admit it."

But Alice was in a mood of mournful condolence. She had pitied herself so overwhelmingly that some of the sentiment had splashed over on the lives of others. It was her habit to sit still under affliction, and when one sits still, one has a long time in which to remember and regret.

"Your marriage must have been a disappointment to you," she said, "but you were so brave, poor dear, that n.o.body suspected it until you were separated."

"I am not a poor dear," retorted Corinna, "and there were a great many things in life for me besides marriage."

"There wouldn't have been in my place," insisted Alice, with a submissive manner but a stubborn mind.

Corinna gazed at her speculatively for a moment; and in her speculation there was the faintest tinge of contempt, the contempt which, in spite of her pity, she felt for all weakness. "I shouldn't have got into your place," she responded presently, "and if I ever found myself there by mistake, I'd make haste to get out of it."

"But suppose you had been like me, Corinna?" The words were a wail of despair.

A laugh rippled like music from Corinna's lips. It was cruel to laugh, she knew, but it was all so preposterous! It was turning things upside down with vehemence when one tried to live by feeling in a world which was manifestly designed for the service of facts. "You ought to have gone on the stage, Alice," she said. "Painted scenery is the only background that is appropriate to you."

Alice sighed. She looked very pretty in her shallow fas.h.i.+on, or Corinna felt that she couldn't have borne it. "You are awfully kind, Corinna,"

she returned, "but you have so little sentiment."

"I know, my dear, but I have some common sense which has served me very well in its place." As Corinna spoke she got up and roamed restlessly about the room, because the sight of that pa.s.sive figure, wrapped in wilted plum blossoms, made her feel as if she wanted to scream. "You can't help being a fool, Alice," she said sternly, "and as long as you are a pretty one, I suppose men won't mind. But you must continue to be a pretty one, or it is all over with you."

The face that Alice turned on her showed a curious mixture of humility over the criticism and satisfaction over the compliment. "I know I've lost my looks dreadfully," she replied, grasping the most important point first, "and, of course, I have been a fool about John. If I hadn't cared so much, things might have been different."

Corinna stopped her impatient moving about and looked down on her. "I didn't mean that kind of fool," she retorted; but just what kind of fool she had meant, she thought it indiscreet to explain.

Suddenly, with a dash of nervous energy which appeared to run like a stimulant through her veins, Alice straightened herself and lifted her head. "It is easy for you to say that," she rejoined, "but you have never been loved to desperation and then deserted."

"No," responded Corinna, with the ripe judgment that is the fruit of bitter experience, "but, if I were ever loved to desperation, I should expect to be. Desperation does things like that."

"You couldn't bear it any better than I can. No woman could."

"Perhaps not." Though Corinna's voice was flippant, there was a stern expression on her beautiful face--the expression that Artemis might have worn when she surveyed Aphrodite. "But I should never have been deserted. I should have taken good care to prevent it."

"I took care too," retorted Alice, with pa.s.sion, "but I couldn't prevent it."

"Your measures were wrong. It is always safer to be on the side of the active rather than the pa.s.sive verb."

With a careless movement, Corinna picked up her beaded bag, which she had laid on the table, and turned to adjust her veil before the mirror.

"If you will let me manage your life for a little while," she observed, with an appreciative glance at the daring angle of the red hat, "I may be able to do something with it, for I am a practical person as well as a capable manager. Father calls me, you know, the repairer of destinies."

"If I thought it would do any good, I'd go to the ball with you," said Alice eagerly, while a delicate colour stained the wan pallor of her face.

"Do you really think," asked Corinna brightly, "that John, able politician though he is, is worth all that trouble?"

"Oh, it isn't just John," moaned Alice; "it is everything."

"Well, if I am going to repair your destiny, I must do it in my own practical way. For a time at least we will let sentiment go and get down to facts. As long as you haven't much sense, it is necessary for you to make yourself as pretty as possible, for only intelligent women can afford to take liberties with their appearances. The first step must be to buy a hat that is full of hope as soon as you can. Oh, I don't mean anything jaunty or frivolous; but it must be a hat that can look the world in the face."

A keen interest awoke in Alice's eyes, and she looked immediately younger. "If I can find one, I'll buy it," she answered. "I'll get dressed in a little while and go out."

"And remember the hyacinth-blue dress. Have it made fresh for to-morrow." Turning in the doorway, Corinna continued with humorous vivacity, "There is only one little thing we must forget, and that is love. The less said about it the better; but you may take it on my authority that love can always be revived by heroic treatment. If John ever really loved you, and you follow my advice, he will love you again."

With a little song on her lips, and her gallant head in the red hat raised to the sunlight, she went out of the house and down the steps into her car. "Fools are very exhausting," she thought, as she bowed to a pa.s.sing acquaintance, "but I think that she will be cured." Then, at the sight of Stephen leaving the Culpeper house, she leaned out and waved to him to join her.

"My dear boy, how late you are!" she exclaimed, when the car had stopped and he got in beside her.

"Yes, I am late." He looked tired and thoughtful. "I stopped to have a talk with Mother, and she kept me longer than I realized."

"Is anything wrong?"

He set his lips tightly. "No, nothing more than usual."

Corinna gazed up at the blue sky and the sunlight. Why wouldn't people be happy? Why were they obliged to cause so much unnecessary discomfort?

Why did they persist in creating confusion?

"Well, I hope you are coming to the dance to-morrow night," she said cheerfully.

"Yes. Mother has asked me to take Margaret Blair."

"I am glad. Margaret is a nice girl. I am going to take Patty Vetch."